Trump Taps Kris Bauman, Expert on Peace Process With Palestinians, as New Israel Adviser

Bauman’s presence at the National Security Council may mean the White House will focus on security related questions as part of Trump’s attempt to reach a peace deal

ed note–2,000 years ago, the Romans first imposed order in the Levant under Pompey the Great and did so as an INVITATION on the part of factions within Judea who sought to bring an end to all the lawlessness that had been spawned by the Maccabees, forerunners of today’s violent, religious nutcase right wing parties in Israel. The first thing the Romans did was to return those lands that had been stolen by the Maccabean Jews to their original Palestinian/Syrian/Jordanian owners, reduced Judea to its original size and–very importantly–IMPOSED BORDERS. After 100 years of Pax Romana in the Levant, the Zealots/Siccari, the great grandchildren of the Maccabees, thought they would be as successful in overthrowing the Romans as their great grandfathers had been in over throwing the Greek Seleucids, thus sparking the ‘Great Jewish Revolt’ that ended with the complete destruction of Judea in 70 A.D.

And for those who say Trump has surrounded himself with Jews because he is in Israel’s pocket, keep in mind a thorny little historical factoid–Titus, the Roman general who destroyed Jerusalem, as well surrounded himself with powerful Jews, both during his military campaign and then afterwards when he became emperor because he needed them to advise him on how to deal with the Jews given that Roman and Judaic thinking were completely alien to each other. 

Haaretz

The Trump administration has chosen Kris Bauman, an Air Force colonel and expert on the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, to replace Yael Lempert as the National Security Council’s point man for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

Bauman was involved in the last round of peace negotiations, which took place under former U.S. President Barack Obama from 2013 to 2014, and has been researching the subject for years, most recently at the National Defense University in Washington. Bauman’s presence at the NSC could indicate that the administration will soon turn its attention to security related questions as part of Trump’s attempt to reach an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. Bauman now works under the Defense Department and his formal move to the White House is being finalized these days.

During the 2013 to 2014 peace talks, Bauman was the chief-of-staff for General John Allen, who was appointed by the Obama administration to devise a comprehensive security plan for the day after a peace agreement is signed.

Allen led a team of dozens of security and intelligence experts and built a plan that won praise from some senior officials in the Israeli security establishment, but was eventually rejected by former Defense Miniser Moshe Yaalon, who ridiculed it in briefings to the press and said it was not worth the paper its written on.

As Haaretz reported two weeks ago, Lempert, who held the Israeli-Palestinian file in Obama’s National Security Council, will leave the White House after an extention of three-and-a-half months, which was requested by senior officials in the Trump administration. She participated in Trump’s meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday, making it her last event before returning to the State Department in the coming days.

Bauman will join a National Security Council in which military officers – on active duty and retired – are holding a number of senior positions, led by U.S. National Security Adviser General H.R McMaster. From 2011 to 2012, Bauman served as an intelligence officer in Iraq. Prior to that, he was a faculty member at the U.S. Air Force Command and Staff College. Bauman holds a PhD from the University of Denver, where his dissertation focused on “multiparty mediation in the Israeli Palestinian peace process.” He began his military career as a pilot flying C-27 and C-5 aircraft.